


I said the truth (and we moved on)

by kaylin_neya



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaylin_neya/pseuds/kaylin_neya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How the fraud trial might have played out differently if Mike, not Donna, was Harvey's secretary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I said the truth (and we moved on)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a poem by Robert Frost, "A Boundless Moment"

It was a sunny Tuesday in mid-July when Mike’s world came crashing down around his ears. His morning had been perfectly ordinary—Raisin Bran for breakfast, packing the work he’d brought home for review into his backpack, a brief checkup of his bike to make sure nothing was loose and potentially deadly, and then he was out the door of his apartment by eight. 

New York traffic being what it was, the seven mile bike ride took almost an hour. Typical, especially for the beginning of the week when people were still motivated to clock in early, providing a nice cushion for Friday when they were certain to clock in late. He stepped out of the elevator into the offices of Pearson Hardman with five minutes to spare until his day officially began at nine. 

There was nothing to suggest that, forty minutes later, he would be walking right back out again…carrying a cardboard box filled with all the personal effects from his desk, accumulated over four solid years of employment for the same lawyer. 

He was still slightly dazed from Jessica Pearson’s quiet pronouncement, but not so much that he didn’t hear the whispers as he made his way down the hall toward the cluster of elevators. They talked in hushed tones amongst themselves, but no one tried to approach him or catch his eye. The polished glass walls of floor fifty-four offices ensured that no one missed the news, even if they didn’t completely understand it—partners, associates, paralegals, and secretaries alike bore witness to the event.   
Except, of course, for the one newly minted senior partner who was noticeably absent throughout. 

Mike waited for the elevator doors to close, shielding him from view, before he let out his breath with a gasp, the lump in his throat so thick it was almost choking him. The facts were undeniably serious. Pearson Hardman was being sued for fraud. Mike had just been fired. And Harvey hadn’t come. 

\--

It was actually Louis Litt who found Mike, that day four years ago when everything changed. Mike can still remember the exact sequence of events that led to his interview. Grams had just fallen into the donut hole of her Medicare plan, bills were piling up, and Mike’s current job of the month (waiting tables at Applebee’s) wasn’t going to cover it.

Trevor had offered to loan Mike the money. Mike refused, for the same reason he’d been refusing Trevor’s help for the past three years.

“Is this about you being afraid to be in debt to me?” Trevor asked, genuinely not getting it. “Because I swear I won’t try to break your legs if you don’t pay me back in three weeks or whatever.”

“That’s not it, man,” Mike told him. “It’s about where your money comes from.”

Trevor opened his mouth to protest, but Mike cut him off,

“I’m not judging you or trying to make you quit. I just…need to find some way to work this out myself.”

Trevor sighed. “Fine. But the offer’s still on the table if you need it.”

It would have been an easy solution, to take Trevor’s money and use it for medicinal instead of recreational drugs. Grams would ask, but he could lie about where it came from. Say Trevor’s software startup had really taken off. 

(She’d be more likely to believe he’d won the lottery then that Trevor was actually working, but she wouldn’t push if Mike didn’t want to talk about it). 

Still, it didn’t sit right with Mike’s conscience. So he put in for extra shifts at Applebee’s and started scanning the papers for second job opportunities. The difficulty was, most jobs that would pull in the kind of money he needed required advanced degrees, and Mike hadn’t even finished college…

But they didn’t have to know that. The idea hit him suddenly, and he wondered how it had never crossed his mind before. Trevor, for all that he had absolutely zero interest in investing with a legitimate software company, was actually excellent with computers. How hard could it be to put a Michael Ross into the graduating class of some mid-level private university, so that he would show up on the school’s online records? As long as no one had reason to look further, Mike’s employment opportunities would increase exponentially.

Trevor, of course, was delighted to help, and twelve hours later Mike was staring at his face on the alumni page of Lehigh University, Class of 2008. The next day, he started making calls.

The New York Specialized Administrative Assistants temp agency was the first to call him back with a job offer, and, from what Mike gathered, he was damn lucky to get it.

“Pearson Hardman is looking for a temp, month maximum. Secretary and legal assistant type work, but probably just means general office skills are required. You said you had experience in that field?” The woman on the phone asked him.

“Yes,” Mike lied, “My uncle runs a small firm, and I worked summers through high school and college. I know the way they operate.”

“Well,” the agent said, “Pearson Hardman is not a ‘small firm’ by any stretch of the imagination, but I think you’ll do fine. You’ve got the interview.”

So Mike borrowed a suit from Trevor—“shit, man, you don’t even have one?”—and caught a cab to the offices of Pearson Hardman, so he wouldn’t run the risk of sweating through his dress shirt or splashing mud on his shoes. There were four other uncomfortable looking people waiting around the office Mike had been directed to; apparently, he wasn’t the only contender for this job. But he’d seen the kind of paycheck this place was good for, so he was determined to be the best.  
The office Mike and his competitors were waiting outside had a long, carefully polished glass wall through which Mike could see a man sitting behind a desk, facing away from the potential employees in favor of looking out his window while speaking into a Dictaphone. 

“The dude’s been keeping us waiting out here for, like, fifteen minutes now,” one woman said irritably from behind Mike, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from her skintight black dress. “And there isn’t anywhere to sit down.”

Mike, after glancing down at her six inch, fire engine red heels, could see how that might be a problem. 

Finally, the man behind the desk set his Dictaphone down carefully, and spun around to face them through the glass wall of his office. He folded his hands under his chin and examined them, one by one. Mike forced himself not to fidget, and used the opportunity to see what he could guess about the guy.

Middle aged and slightly pudgy, balding, but impeccably dressed—his suit jacket was on, despite the warm weather, and his tie was knotted neatly and perfectly centered. A man who cared about details, and about what others thought of him. A hard worker, likely, but not high up on the organizational ladder if he was interviewing temporary legal assistants instead of meeting with big name clients or showing off in court. 

Before Mike could get any further, the man stood and walked to the door, holding a sheet of yellow paper clearly torn from a legal pad. 

“Gwyneth Rogers?” 

The red-heels lady took a step forward as her name was called, smiling. The lawyer gave her a flat look and said, before she could come any closer, “No.”

She paused, looking slightly confused. The lawyer looked back down at his paper and said, “Conor Tracey?”

One of the men in the group stepped forward warily, but the lawyer simply beckoned and went back into his office. Conor Tracey shrugged and followed. The woman who had been dismissed with nothing more than a look left in a huff, complaining loudly.

Not five minutes later, Conor Tracey emerged from the office with a dazed look on his face, and walked right past them towards the elevators without a word. Mike raised his eyebrows and exchanged glances with the two other women still standing in the hallway.

The lawyer, whose office door read ‘Louis Litt’, poked his head out of his office again and said, “Michael Ross?”

Mike took a breath to steady himself, and then stepped forward confidently. Louis Litt gave him a quick once over and nodded, which Mike supposed was permission to enter the office. He did, and closed the door behind him.

Litt was already sitting at his desk, leaning back and sizing Mike up. Mike stood patiently under the scrutiny, until finally the man said,

“Shows awareness of social boundaries. Good start. Please, take a seat.”

Mike sat. 

“So, Mr. Ross,” he said, “Why do you think I should hire you?”

Simple enough. Mike’s rehearsed speech fell easily off his tongue, “I’m very well qualified, responsible, and—”

But here Litt cut him off with a hand wave and an eye-roll. “Oh, please. As if that isn’t what everyone else is saying. If you’re just going to bore me you can get out now.”

Mike was startled, but he recovered and said quickly, “What people say doesn’t matter. Actions are what count. So when I tell you,” he leaned forward slightly, and could tell he had Litt’s full attention, “that I am the most hard-working, detail oriented, smartest legal assistant you are going to find, I’m prepared to back those claims up.”

Litt was looking at Mike straight on now, somewhat surprised, like they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and he was trying to figure out how to get back onto familiar ground.

“And how are you planning to do that?” Litt asked, finally.

Mike knew he’d won, but also that he’d better not show that he knew it. So he said, as earnestly as he could manage, “I’ll let you have a trial run. One full day, and if you’re satisfied, keep me on. If not, I’ll leave immediately without complaint. You lose nothing; if I’m competent, you find what you’re looking for, if not, then you are free to keep looking.”

Litt continued to regard him in silence for what felt like hours until he said, “Deal. You start now. First job, get rid of the superfluous females lurking outside my door.” 

\--

Litt—“Call me Louis. And your preferred form of address would be…no, never mind, I don’t actually care. I’ll call you Mike.”—aside from being one of the strangest people Mike had ever met, was not actually as tyrannical as Mike had feared. Yes, he had a tendency to micromanage, but so far Mike wasn’t drowning in work, and he hadn’t been given anything more complicated than filing and correspondence. Granted, he hadn’t even finished his first day, but Mike got the feeling Louis wasn’t one to hold back or worry about easing people in. 

Mike started to relax. Which was when it happened. 

Mike was just coming back from the copy room when Louis yelled for him. Mike slipped into Louis’ office and asked,

“Can I get you anything?”

Louis didn’t look up. “I’ve been calling you for the past three minutes, why weren’t you at your desk?”

Mike blinked. “Because I was picking up the fax from Wakefield Cady with signatures validating the Aon settlement?”

Louis frowned as he tried to find something to complain about, and ended up going with, “Well, you picked an inconvenient time. I need to talk to Harvey Specter, and he’s answering his phone. Go find him.”

“You need—what? Who?”

“Just go find him, would you!” Louis looked angry enough that Mike left immediately, not looking where he was going, and bumping straight into a pretty brown haired girl carrying a stack of files that went flying. 

“Oh God,” Mike said, bending to pick up the scattered papers, “I’m so sorry.”

The girl smiled at him. “It’s okay. I could hear Louis yelling from out here. Are you the new secretary?”

“Yeah. Mike Ross.” Mike held out his hand.

She shook it firmly. “Rachel Zane.”

Mike stood and handed her files back, then hesitated. She noticed. “What is it?”

“Louis told me to find a man named Harvey Specter. Would you by any chance…?”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’re, what, a human tracker now? Harvey usually does lunch with clients or other partners around one, but we could go leave a message with his secretary for when he gets back. Come on, I’ll show you where he lives.”

“Thank you,” Mike said, with feeling.

There was just one problem: Harvey’s secretary wasn’t there. 

Rachel stared at the empty desk, a look of resignation on her face. “I thought for sure she would at least finish out the week.”  
“What?”

Rachel glanced at him. “Harvey used to have this fantastic secretary, Donna. She quit about six months ago, no one really knows why, since she’d worked for him for years, but ever since then he’s run through secretaries like Kleenex. He’s not exactly the easiest person to work for. Looks like he’s just lost his latest.”

Mike sighed. “Great. Well, I’m not leaving him a post-it on the door. I guess I’ll just have to keep checking back.”

Rachel smiled sympathetically. “Good luck.”

As it turned out, checking back was unnecessary. When Mike got back to his desk, there was a man in Louis’ office. The two were having a heated conversation, and Mike heard Louis say—

“Well, Harvey, if you would just do your job instead of flirting with the clients and sleeping with judges’ daughters”

—before he tuned the conversation out. Evidently, Harvey had found Louis first. And whatever it was they were arguing about, it sounded personal. None of Mike’s business. He went back to drafting letters. 

Until, of course, “Mike!”

Mike’s head shot up, and he turned to look at Louis’ office. Louis yelled, “Bring me the annotated copy of the Knopf financials.”

Mike grabbed a thick blue file from under the desk and brought it in. The other lawyer, Harvey Specter, was still in the room, leaning casually against the bookcases set up against the far wall. He barely glanced at Mike before asking Louis, 

“Just what exactly are you trying to prove with this?”

“I’m telling you exactly what you don’t want to hear,” Louis said angrily, “That there is no win for us—for the stock options backdating to be considered fraudulent, and therefore punishable, we have to prove the intent was to purposefully mislead stockholders. Otherwise there’s no precedent. Transparent backdating is perfectly legal.”

“Which means we need to find a paper trail detailing the cover-up.” Harvey ran a hand through his hair, which looked like it had started the day perfectly styled until it encountered this kind of abuse, “This is supposed to be your specialty, Louis, that’s why Jessica had us work on this together.”

“What about Sarbanes-Oxley?”

Both Harvey and Louis turned to stare at Mike. He replayed the last few moments in his head, and, yep, he had really just said that.

Harvey recovered first. “Statute of limitations renders Sarbanes-Oxley related complaints moot for anything after 2007.”

Mike hesitated. Louis was still looking at Mike like he’d grown a second head, but Harvey appeared to be waiting for an answer. So Mike gave it to him. 

“Not if you can find evidence of attempts to cover up the violations before that time. Which there should be, since almost every company was pressured into internal investigations after scandals like Enron and WorldCom led to the passage of SOX in the first place.”

Harvey turned to look at Louis. “Who is this?”

Louis’ mouth opened and closed twice before he said, “Mike Ross. My temp while Norma’s in Canada visiting her mother.”

“So does that mean I’m hired?” Mike asked, taking advantage of Louis’ somewhat incoherent state to try and push for his job.

Harvey looked at Mike. “He hasn’t hired you yet?”

Mike shrugged, “Officially, I’m doing a trial run before I sign a contract.”

“Come work for me instead,” Harvey said, “I’ll pay you twice what Louis was planning to and I’ll offer you a long term deal.”

Mike blinked, and all he could manage was, “Um.”

Harvey took his surprise for hesitation, and added, “Plus, I won’t yell for you to fetch like a puppy.”

“Done.” Mike said immediately. 

Harvey turned to Louis, “I’ll take that case, and my new secretary, and we’ll be out of your hair. Thanks for the input, I can handle the rest from here.”

“You can’t do that!” Louis said, finding his voice again.

“Don’t worry,” Harvey said, reaching over to pluck the file out of Louis’ hand, “I’ll tell Jessica you did a decent job organizing the company’s financials. Go pack up your things,” he added to Mike, “my office is down the hall to the left.”

“Not that,” Louis said, “I mean, obviously I should get more credit, yes, but I was talking about Mike. You can’t just steal my secretary. Get your own.”

“I just did,” Harvey said, “He was never legally yours to begin with. Not my fault you didn’t get a commitment right away.”

And that was how Mike met Harvey. 

\--

Now, holding a cardboard box and far too many wild emotions in check as he gestured for a cab—no way he could bike with all this, he’d have to come back for his bike, and wouldn’t that be awkward (great, now he's even babbling to himself)—he almost wished that day had never happened. 

Almost. Because, no matter how painful and humiliating this was, Mike couldn’t bring himself to really regret a single minute spent with Harvey.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who supported my first effort in this fandom--this one is for you!


End file.
